Review: Sony Ericsson W595

Here we have the successor of W580 not only with a better design but also with better specs like 2.2” QVGA and a 3.2 MP camera to name a few. Here is a review of the latest in the walkman series.

Key Features:

Quad-band GSM and 3G

3.2 MP camera with 2.5x digital zoom

2.2” QVGA 256K colour display

Bluetooth A2DP and USB 2.0 support

Auto-rotate display

40MB internal memory, expandable upto 8GB, 2GB M2 included

Walkman 3.0 with shake control and SenseMe

FM radio

The W595 comes with a battery charger, USB data cable, two-piece headset with a stereo share headset to share music with friends and a 2GB M2 card to store all your music.

The Design:

W595 is a slider phone (like its precedor W580) and has metallic finish and rubbery accent on the back and sides of it. It weighs 104g with dimensions 100×47×14 mm. Most of the front panel is occupied by the 2.2” display. The keys below the display take up rest of the space. Though a slider the phone is sleek and fits in comfortably in the hand.

The keypad under the slider is comfortable with good spacing between the keys. Apart from these the walkman key and the shake control is on the right side. On the back is the 3.2 MP camera. SE fans would really miss a flash and a lens cover though.Phonebook:

The phone book can store a thousand contacts (1000 contacts and 7000 numbers). One thing worth mentioning is that while viewing your phonebook, either the phone memory or the SIM memory can be viewed, not both. But the contacts can easily be transferred to and fro the phone memory and SIM card and can be stored on both too.

Calling and SMSing:

The voice quality is excellent with both the speakerphone as well as the earpiece. Smart search is a great tool while searching for a contact. It displays the users with the numbers that you type plus the users whose name begin with corresponding letters.

The messaging is comfortable with good spacing in the keypad and the T9 dictionary. The Manage Messages feature helps storing messages in the phone memory or the SIM card and arrange messages according to date, size, and contacts.

Walkman:

Now the most important frature of the W595. The walkman with shake control makes the user interface fantastic. The accelerometer changes the song with a shake. SenseMe creates the popular playlists. The sound quality with the speakers is not so satisfactory whereas its excellent with the earpiece on. The FM radio can be accessed with the earpiece plugged in. Upto 20 stations can be stored or an auto scan and save feature can be used to store stations.

Camera:

The 3.2 MP camera is just satisfactory (we can term it bad aswell with no Zoom option if you are clicking the image at full 3.2 MP resolution). W595 being a walkman series phone, not much have been included to the camera feature. There is no flash to support taking pictures at night. Although it does not have GPS, but Geo tagging works well on the phone and view on map feature can be used to locate pictures taken in a particular geographic location.

Applications and Games:

Sony Ericsson comes with lots of additional applications like Comeks Strips, Music Mate, Music Quiz, World Clock 3d, Rock Bobblehead, Walk Mate and a YouTube client. Comeks Strips is an interesting application that lets you add speech bubbles to your photos. Music Mate 5 lets you play music by shaking your phone. It also consist of Guitar and piano lessons. (I don’t really see people using YouTube client without WiFi)

The games are interesting and time engaging. W595 comes with four pre-installed games – Extreme Air Snowboarding, Guitar Rock Tour, QuadraPop and Racing Fever GT.

Others:

Sony Ericsson W595 uses Access NetFront web brouser like most of its previous handsets. Virtual mouse pointer and find on page add to the convenience in brousing, but the small screen size is a real drawback. The organizer feature consists of Calculator, Calendar, voice Recorder, File Manager, Alarms, Tasks, Notes, Stopwatch, Timer and Code memo.

Conclusion:

W595 is overall a good walkman phone with all features of the walkman series included. At a price of $250 (Around INR Rs 13000), W595 is moderately priced. C902 and W760 priced similar are a better option over W595 in a similar price range. We would have appreciated WiFi in this unit; but its no smartphone. Its a Walkman music phone. The dual 3.5mm jack in the headset included is cool. Battery life is better than what we expected from SE; goes over 2 days with moderate usage.